Why are you Hiding

I think it is part people being circumspect and you having a sheltered up bringing.
Why don't you ask your parents if anyone you know or they know is gay?
My kids know that there are lbgt people, they know that I have lgbt friends.
So if you have grown up the way you have it's due to you being sheltered combined with there not being a good level of acceptance for people who are different.

I know a lot of people get weird when it comes to kids and 'impressionable' teens,
it' like they hope if kids are brought up with only straight role models that they won't know any better and so won't grow up to be lgbt, which is just daft.

ninty9er wrote: »

Religion is a subject about diversity, not Catholicism.

It's meant to be but it often isn't taught that way. I was talking to my cousin about this the last day and as he put it 'We had to cover six religions, including Catholicism. Each religion got a chapter except Catholicism, which got the rest of the book.' My experience with it was basically the same. I did my leaving cert last year.

ninty9er wrote: »

...To all intents and purposes I want to live in a world where knowing gay people and straight people doesn't matter, I just want to know people.

I think that's very idealistic - It also seems to me to be an ideal that society should be homogenised and homogeneous - in a way sort of not recognising diverse cultures and almost wanting an overtly heteronormative society.

No, it's a society where sexuality isn't an issue, and in general, in my experience, it isn't. If someone wants to assume I'm straight it makes no difference to me. If I want someone to know I'm gay they will, but it's not important that everyone knows. No more than people knowing that someone straight has a girlfriend or boyfriend, these just aren't things worth losing sleep over

I never meant to infer people being frowned upon. That's not acceptable. What I mean is that society as a whole is moving beyond the whole notion of having to go to a gay bar to pick up a guy or girl, it can be done in any pub or club, well any one where there's a young crowd, under 30s ish. In ten years that'll be under 40s, 20 years under 50s and so on.

I accept that there are people who like the idea of gay bars and I wouldn't seek to deprive them of that, but I would like to see a rebranding to camp bars or drag bars, because if these bars are seen as for gay people only then we're not exactly being positive about mainstreaming sexualities.

For example IT Blanch and IT Tallaght from what I'm told have as many straight people in their LGBT societies as gay. I'm told they're actually LGBTF societies to encourage straight people to become involved and make it an integral social and awareness vehicle rather than a thing "the gays use to find sex" or a segregated part of society. I just think that's a really positive outlook that should be more encouraged.

yawha wrote: »

Not that I agree with him, but I'm not really understanding your logic in envisaging that this society would be heteronormative and culturally homogeneous.

He's simply proposing a society where a person's sexuality is less of a defining feature of their lives. This implies nothing about homogeneity or heteronormativity.

You can argue that that's an assimilationist perspective.

I have to say it does get to me when straight people say "Oh, sexuality isn't that big a deal." Well, yeah, obviously not for them.

yawha wrote: »

He's simply proposing a society where a person's sexuality is less of a defining feature of their lives. This implies nothing about homogeneity or heteronormativity.

lgbt people would just be blending in with everyone else - assimilating if you like. We wouldn't have gay bars, LGBT groups, pride parades - lgbt people and how we define ourselves and our relationships would become almost a mirror image of heterosexual people and heterosexual relationships - anything outside the norm would be looked down and labelled as freakish. That's what I would imagine such a society to look like.

yawha wrote: »

I'm not getting you at all. Why would anything outside the norm be looked down upon or labelled as freakish?

Because it happens all the time in day-to-day society. Any sexual practices that are not procreative, mononogomous or "vanilla" (sorry all, it's early and that word fits) are continually seen as freakish. The gay community is as guilty of this as heteronormative society, in the strive for equality, there is a tendency to follow an assimilationist route i.e. "Don't worry, we are just like you."

yawha wrote: »

It seems you're making the leap from the suggestion of a society where one's sexuality is less of a defining feature of their identity to one which is backward, homogeneous and heteronormative.

In order to do this, there will have to be one of two things, a radical overhaul of societal norms, in that the result is that society do not privilage heterosexual, monogomous, procreative relationships or that, those on the margins simply adapt to the normative standards. In my opinion, the societal norms need to be critiqued before we can envision any form of sexual identity utopia, because otherwise we are assimilating into a society that is both highly gendered, hierarchal, and still non-egalitarian.

I'm reading this and as when this topic comes up in any of it's forms I'm left wondering why it is such an either or situation. Ideal world apart, even the world we live in there seems to be this unnerving rigidity to the idea that you are some how being disloyal to your own identity by not conforming solely to one mindset or the other. Yes LGBT organisations and clubs etc are a good idea but should they be the defining one no, are you being untrue to yourself because you feel more comfortable being in a "heteronormative" roll (whatever the hell that actually is). I play rugby, that makes me a rugby player but that does not define who I am it is part of who I am. The fact that I play for a gay friendly rugby team expresses another part of who I am but neither defines who I am or how I should act. I walk around and my sexuality is not an issue for anyone else unless I choose it to be so, nor is the sport I play, the music I like, literature, people I love or anything else that I don't choose to share with others so why should my sexual preference be. I'm not hiding anything my life is big enough to fit it all in, so yes there is space for LGBT stuff, yes there is space for work, yes there is space to be a father, yes there is space to be an artist these are all my choices why should my sexuality define them!

Sir Ophiuchus wrote: »

Nitpick: sexual orientation, not sexual preference.



It shouldn't, but it's not realistic to claim that your sexuality doesn't colour other aspects of your life, even if it doesn't totally define them.

You play for a gay rugby team - don't you think the dynamic might be different if you were the only out gay man on an otherwise-straight rugby team?

Also, heteronormative doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Acting non-stereotypically for a gay man isn't being heteronormative. Heteronormativity is when people think, speak, and act in a way that ignores and diminishes non-heterosexual identities. A simple example is when all the men in an office are told they can bring their wives to a party, or when gay couples are described as "roommates" in sociological studies, or when my coworker asks if I have a girlfriend.

[Important footnote: That doesn't mean any or all of these examples are malicious or wrong, it's just that when they're replicated on a large scale they erode non-normative identities.]

Maybe that was part of my confusion, the term heteronormative suggested to me conforming to some kind of masculinity for males or femininity for females. When now more than ever the lines between femininity and masculinity have been blurred beyond recognition. However your explanations bring up another question for me, those same examples could be used for most societal norms in fact it is human nature to generalise for ease of understanding and basic cognitive functions i.e. it's Ireland people assume your catholic or at least were christened that way unless you volunteer the information refuting that, going to a protestant church every Sunday doesn't change that as going to going to a gay bar at the weekend wouldn't change your co-workers assumptions unless you volunteer that information. I do get the problem with heteronormativity on an institutional level i.e your example of sociological studies which does need to be addressed but am not getting the relationship between LGBT societies and clubs combating it.

As a side note I truely believe that as an openly Gay/Bi player in a straight rugby team would have a negligable impact on the dynamics from what I have seen.